by Ajahn Chah
I don’t know how great it is to be old, actually. Are there any old folks where you live? What kind of shape are they in? Could they keep up with you in a footrace? Their teeth fall out, their sight is weak, their hearing is going. When they stand up, they groan. When they sit down, they groan again. Yet when we are young we like to think, When I’m older, I will do it. Somehow we get the idea that in old age we will be energetic and robust. Old Mr. Kiem in the village here used to carry big planks around when he was a young man; now he has to lean on a cane to walk. Life’s like this. So don’t get these funny ideas, please.
While we are still alive, let’s pay attention to good and evil. Whatever is wrong and bad, let’s try to avoid doing. Whatever is good, let’s make efforts to do. That’s all. These are things that anyone can practice. You don’t need to leave it for old age. Come on—you’ve seen aged people, haven’t you? Every move they make is accompanied by groans and creaking. Don’t you know why? Yet even so, we close our eyes and ears and say, “Let me finish with this first; let me take care of that piece of business. Wait until I get older, then I’ll go to the monastery.” Can you understand this? When you are old it’s hard to sit for long. Listening to teachings, you might not hear clearly or understand well. So don’t wait for old age. Practice steadily and continuously. Before old age comes, you have youth. It’s not like you are old and then you become young. It only goes one way.
The truth is that you’ve been aging from a long time back. You probably have the feeling that you are young people. But as soon as you were born, your aging began. You could say that it began even in your mother’s womb. As you grew there, you became older than you were previously. Then birth occurred. If you hadn’t aged, there would have been no birth—you would just have remained in the womb. Then as you grow bit by bit, from infant to child and on, it is more aging. So by the time you have reached this point, you can certainly say that you are old. You don’t feel that you are old, you don’t see it. But if you hadn’t aged, you wouldn’t be at this stage of your life now. It’s better to think that you are old already, and then you will feel the importance of having real Dharma practice in your life. Then eventually nobility and virtue will result. You should begin with virtuous ways right from today, when you are relatively young, and later on you will certainly have well-being. Creating good karma in the present, there is no miserable result later on. That’s a good principle to follow. Actions that bring distress later on are those you can avoid. These are good things to give careful consideration in your youth. But if you have the idea that you must deal with different pressing matters before you can practice Dharma, there will likely never come such a time.
In Buddhism, our actions should be aimed at making body and speech pure first. This is spoken of as sila, or “morality.” That’s a simple way to put it. If the body and speech are pure, then there will be calmness, and the mind will be firmly established. This is speaking in a simplified way.
What is this calmness about? If you haven’t stolen anything, you are free of worry. When the police come looking for a thief, you can relax because you know it’s not you they’re after. If your mind is in this condition, free of anxiety, then when sense activity and thinking occur you are able to know them clearly. Briefly, this is called the progression of morality, concentration, and wisdom.
Earlier, we learned that to practice samadhi we need a teacher. I’ll relate the following from my own studies. You had to have a teacher. You brought incense, candles, and flowers to the teacher. You began your recitation, making obeisance to him, and then you supplicated and prayed, “May this take effect in me, may sila that is not pure become pure, may samadhi come to reside in my mind. . . .” We studied the text, and then we did the complete recitation of the factors of concentration, the different types of joy and rapture and so on. We invited samadhi to come, and then we sat. But I never saw it come. I just sat there and got worked up because nothing was happening. So I started to think, “Eh, this is not the way to do it. If you could just invite virtue and concentration and they would come, that would certainly be easy. . . . But it seems it’s up to us to invest some effort here to make it happen.” This is how it started to look to me, so I discarded the way I had learned.
In practice, some come to see easily, some with difficulty. But whatever the case, never mind. Difficult or easy, the Buddha said not to be heedless. Just that—don’t be heedless. Why? Because life is not certain. Wherever we start to think that things are certain, uncertainty is lurking right there. Heedlessness is just holding things as certain. It is grasping at certainty where there is no certainty and looking for truth in things that are not true. Be careful! They are likely to bite you sometime in the future!
So in dealing with things, true or false, good or bad, pleasing or displeasing, never mind—it’s important to train the mind to accord with the path, which means establishing right view. Please don’t be careless! Don’t get carried away building anything up, making a big deal out of it to the point that you get lost. If there is disappointment and upset over things, know that there is unhappiness, but don’t let the suffering exceed the truth of what it is. If you like things, don’t get carried away. You can have the liking, but it should not become excessive. In the local idiom we say, “Don’t get drunk!” When you meet unhappy situations, don’t become drunk with unhappiness. When you experience happiness or pleasure, don’t become drunk with that. We say, “Don’t get drunk,” but it just means not to let things go to excess. Have a sense of moderation. If things stay with us, that’s OK. If things leave us, that is OK. But if we are intoxicated with things, we suffer when we lose them. Or if unpleasant phenomena stay and won’t leave, we suffer. If we grasp them firmly, we exceed the truth of them and lose the path. This is not Dharma, and we are not practitioners of Dharma. This excess leads us to stray from the path.
This straying is wrong view, which is the cause of suffering. The explanations about practice are aimed at knowing the cessation of suffering. Practicing according to that understanding is simply practicing to realize the cessation of suffering. If we have this kind of view, we know suffering and how it arises. We know its cessation and the way to practice to bring about cessation. This is what is called knowledge in Buddhism. It doesn’t refer to anything else. If we don’t understand suffering, we are going to get involved in suffering without any moderation. If we like something, we are not likely to establish any limits, there will be no reflection on whether or not it is really beneficial, and we won’t heed anyone’s counsel. No one will be able to stop us. Someone may be gorging himself on his favorite delicacies, and no matter what you tell him he has no desire to control himself. “No problem, I assure you!” To him it’s all good, simply because he likes it. He doesn’t think about later in the day when he will feel sick and bloated; when it’s too late, he is taken by surprise and gets upset.
So the Buddha wanted us to know, this is suffering, this is the cause of suffering, this is the ending of suffering, and this is the path to ending suffering. All practice can be summarized into these factors. This is really all there is. To put the Dharma into concise, succinct terms, there is suffering born and suffering passing away. Outside of this, there is nothing else. Suffering arises; suffering passes away.
Why are we suffering, lost in the cycle of samsara, or “conditioned existence”? Because we don’t know these things according to the truth; we don’t know suffering. So we pick up suffering, thinking it will bring happiness, and it ends up biting us. Like a farmer who sees a cobra lying alone in the field and feels sorry for it. He thinks, We should have lovingkindness toward creatures and give them a little help and comfort. He doesn’t know what it really is. He doesn’t know this is a creature that will inflict terrible pain. So he picks it up and gently holds it to himself. When it feels the warmth and comfort, it bites him. This happens because of good intentions, but there is no knowledge. This is something that can kill; you should understand this. It is just the same for
us when we don’t understand suffering, its coming into existence, its cessation, and the way to cessation.
All suffering and unsatisfactory experience come from causes. When the causes end, the suffering ends. All dharmas, whether pleasant or unpleasant, arise from causes. Knowing the four aspects—suffering, its arising, cessation, and the path—is all we need. No other Dharma is necessary, because everything is naturally condensed into these aspects.
The points of contact, the receiving apparatus, are the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind. When the mind is aware and recognizes that experience is suffering, it will let go. It actually lets go in a great hurry.
So you who practice, please know this clearly. Knowing this important fact will enable you to be decisive in your practice. There are many scholarly and scriptural approaches to elucidate and help people see this clearly. Some of you have no doubt studied the sutras and the abhidharma. They talk extensively about the mind, and you may have gotten the idea that you need to learn all of this. It seems like a good thing, but you can get stuck in the discussion without really knowing what it is pointing out. You merely learn to enumerate the things that the scriptures say.
An easy example is the study of arithmetic. Some people have to learn methodically, step by step, and then they are able to do things with numbers. But for some, this isn’t necessary. They have a natural affinity for numbers, so they don’t need to learn the method of adding, the method of subtracting, and so on. They merely use the method of thinking, and they can intuitively figure sums, knowing immediately the same things as the person who has studied laboriously and employs the learned methods. There are different approaches for different kinds of people. The results are of equal worth, but the ways of reaching them are different. You could say that the intuitive people have no brand name. They haven’t undergone a standard course of study, they haven’t learned methods, but they know just the same and can get the same results. Their knowledge is also valid and useful.
You can practice without much study and still know well. The pacceka buddhas, the “solitary enlightened ones” who become awakened without a teacher, are a good example of this. They can’t teach anyone, but they can instruct themselves. Though they know within themselves, they cannot tell others. They are always peaceful and radiant, but they cannot teach anyone else. It’s like being a mute. A mute can dream, and in the dream she sees fields, mountains, animals, and so on. When she wakes, she can’t tell others about it. If an ordinary person dreams of snakes, he can tell others about the snakes he saw; if he dreams of cattle, he can tell others about the cattle. The pacceka buddhas are just like a mute who has dreamed about something. Still, they have no desire, anger, or delusion and are out of the cycle of birth and death. Their burden is small. The mute has the same knowledge and experience as the one who sees the various things in dreams and is able to speak about it. In their knowledge, they are equal.
So all these things are within. The Buddha wanted us to seek out the truth. This is where truth is. When something is dirty, there are those who will simply try to avoid it. Actually, the problem is how to clean it. When you wash and scrub it, you see cleanliness in the same place where there was dirt. But some will see the unclean and want to get away from it, thinking the clean must be somewhere else. Cleanliness and dirtiness are mixed together. The deluded sentient being and the enlightened one are mixed together. Knowing and not knowing are mixed together. When we can separate them out, we see clearly.
If we look at the life history of the Buddha, we see that he didn’t take any shortcuts. He really did things right. But for us, there’s no end to the story. With our minds, when something comes and we like it, in the end there will be sadness. Why is that? Something we don’t like we can lose or discard without any sadness. Why is that? It is ordinary, an extremely ordinary occurrence for us.
Let all of us enter the practice with correct understanding. Then there will be no returning. Like the stream enterer, whose mind has inclined toward the Dharma. Then in living together there will be very few problems. If we all get to this point of inclining the mind to Dharma, we will be in harmony. Whatever anyone may say to us, we won’t take our reactions as the standard. If we have a sense of responsibility, we will be honest with each other, without jealousy or strife. This is the way of people whose minds have bent to the stream. Where do such people come from? From those whose minds had not yet bent, literally called the “thick ones.” Those who become virtuous people, and eventually awakened beings, are originally just this class of people, no other.
So to summarize what our practice is about, we can use the terms that traditionally describe the four virtuous qualities of the sangha, or “the community of genuine practitioners.” Whoever practices well; who is upright; who practices to escape from samsara; who practices wisely by way of body, speech, and mind will find it all coming together at the one point of accomplishment.
1
HEARING DHARMA
IN TEACHING THE DHARMA, things have to be repeated over and over for people to gain real understanding. This is normal. It’s what has to be done in order to get the important points across.
The words of the Buddha are called “good speech,” because they lead people’s minds to the truth. It is speech that is good and reasonable and full of meaning. When it really touches the mind, one desists from harming oneself and others and gives up the three poisons of desire, anger, and delusion.
But some will hear it and call it wrong speech, because it doesn’t agree with their opinions and habits. Actually, the things that agree with sentient beings’ minds are not always good. In our minds there are concepts of right and wrong, but those things are uncertain. Good speech, however, is straight, direct, and upright. It is neither profound nor shallow, rather it is the speech of the Buddha, which has the purpose of reducing the emotional afflictions and getting free of delusion.
Such words do not merely try to follow people’s personal preferences. Some will say, “If it disagrees with me, it isn’t good speech, and it can’t be Dharma.” But it’s not a matter of that which agrees being good and that which disagrees being bad. These are just preconceptions and biases, the listener’s habitual likes and dislikes. If we try to have everything agree with us, there will be no end to difficulty. We won’t want to do anything disagreeable. Whatever we like, we will wish to embrace and act on it, no matter how much grief it brings. Poisonous food may be tasty, but there is danger later on.
The speech of the Buddha and of his disciples is all good; it is Dharma. But when ordinary people hear it, they may not understand it easily if it is not presented in a way that can reach their minds. It is not easy to see or easy to practice.
Any language is a tool to help us understand. Language is only language. If someone says just one word of English to me, I don’t have a clue what they’re saying, and it has no value or meaning to me even though it’s a popular language now. Wherever we live, in whatever country, let us speak things that help us understand right and wrong clearly. This kind of speech is useful; it is Dharma. But know that hearing Dharma is for the purpose of the mind seeing and being Dharma, not for mere knowledge or memorization. It should enable us to follow in the footsteps of the Buddha and practice according to what he taught. Even though we have not yet attained realization, we should put language to work and contemplate it.
It’s easy, in a way. For example, the Buddha said laziness and negligence are not good. Having heard that, when you find them arising in your mind, as they will, you recognize and know them for what they are. Then you can escape from indolence and give rise to diligence. When laziness arises, it is nowhere but in the mind. When it comes, let it be a cause for practicing Dharma, which means going against, reducing, and transforming this laziness. We listen to Dharma to make our minds into Dharma, to let it arise in our minds; if it has not yet arisen, we strive to make it arise. It’s not so difficult to practice. We just need to apply effort to make the mind pay attention and work l
ike this. You want your mind to be Dharma, not merely the sounds that come from your mouth. Don’t keep the knowledge in your brain or in your mouth. Make the gates of body, speech, and mind consistent in Dharma.
Ajahn Chah (fourth from left, standing) with a group of senior monks, circa 1980.
Listening to Dharma is for the purpose of knowing how to practice Dharma. So if we say, “Practice to make it Dharma,” then what exactly is Dharma? Everything in this world. Something that is not Dharma does not exist. Forms that we can see with the eye are nothing but Dharma. Beings in the world are all Dharma. One meaning of Dharma is nature, which arises just as it is, and which nobody can fashion or alter. The nature of phenomena is Dharma. This refers to objects, the world of forms.
The Buddha said to see Dharma and enter Dharma, that is, to see all things as they really are. Living beings and material objects, as well as the inner phenomena of feeling and thinking—all this is Dharma. There are these two categories: objects that can be seen by the eye or known by the other senses, and mind, which cannot be seen in that way. It is nothing far away from us, just mind and body. But this Dharma, this nature, arises independent of our wishes, from causes and conditions. In the middle it changes, and in the end it breaks up and disappears. The Dharma of nature has power above all things. No one can request it to become greater or less. Natural things have their own mode of existing according to their causes.
The Dharma that we come to request, the precepts and teaching, is a tool to help us understand. The teaching is words. Dharma does not exist in the words, rather the words are a path, something to point out the way to people, catch their minds, and lead them to know and realize Dharma. So it is said that the teaching itself is not Dharma. We hear with the ear and speak with the tongue, but that is not of ultimate value. These words and concepts are not Dharma itself. If they were actually Dharma, they would have an independent existence of their own above all things. So coming to understand Dharma is just a matter of working to develop the wisdom to see things according to truth rather than destroying or changing anything.